Robocalls: Businesses dial up pressure on the FCC

Business groups representing industries from health care to banking are pressuring the Federal Communications Commission to ease its rules on robocalls — saying they should get a carve-out for technology that automatically dials customers.

In meetings with top FCC aides, executives with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association and American Association of Health Care Administrative Management say they’re being victimized by unfair class action lawsuits brought under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and that the “predictive dialers” they use should be exempt from robocall rules, according to a document released Wednesday.

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Such predictive-dialing technology allows “businesses with a legitimate need to contact large numbers of specific customers for nontelemarketing purposes,” the groups told top FCC staff during a spate of recent meetings.

The meeting is part of an escalating fight at the commission over the TCPA, a 1991 law designed to crack down on telemarketer robocalls peddling goods and services. Congress modified the law in 2003, ordering the Federal Trade Commission to establish a Do Not Call Registry for consumers.

Business groups say that while a predictive dialer mechanically rings up a number, it shouldn’t be lumped together with typical robocalls that dial random numbers and connect a caller with a recorded message. The commission’s rules have opened companies up to litigation, they say.

“Some courts are now interpreting the commission’s prior TCPA rulings to mean that all predictive dialers are ‘autodialers’ even if they do not meet the statutory definition of an ‘autodialer,’” the groups told the commission. “As a result, companies are being sued in TCPA class actions and are facing potentially devastating penalties just for using predictive dialers or other new technologies.”

The business groups contend that the number of lawsuits brought under the TCPA is approaching 500 so far this year — nearly double the number of such cases filed in the same period last year. The suits generally seek between $500 and $1,500 per call, the groups say.

According to the business groups, a change in some of the commission’s definitions can clear up the legal confusion.

“The commission can resolve much of this litigation by clarifying that a predictive-dialer solution that does not meet the statutory requirements of an ‘autodialer’ is not an ‘autodialer,’” the groups argued.